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Title: Slaves to Duty Author: John Badcock, Jr. Date: 1894 Language: en Topics: egoist, individualist, alienation Source: Retrieved on January 6, 2013 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/coldoffthepresses/SlavesToDuty.pdf Notes: Published by Laurance Labadie Detroit, Michigan 1938Editor’s Note: A more recent edition appeared in 1972, published by Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc. as number two in its’ Libertarian Broadsides Series of pamphlets.
Slaves to Duty is an address delivered by John Badcock, Jr., in 1894,
before the South Place Junior Ethical Society, London, and printed as a
pamphlet by William Reeves in the same year. Owing to its rarity, being
long out of print, and the apparent unfamiliarity with the subject with
which it dealt, the publisher considers its presentation timely in a
world infested with professional saviors and dictators of every
description.
Page titles [ed. note: redacted] are the publishers presumption, and
were suggested by sub-titles appearing with excerpts from Badcock’s
lecture which were printed in Instead of a Magazine, a mimeographed
anarchist monthly edited by Herman Kuehn, from where some of the titles
were taken.
Job done with worn type, hand set, and printed on the ‘antique’
Washington Jobber on which my father used to print booklets of his
verses,—by an amateur, which may account for imperfections. L. L.
Ladies and Gentlemen, —
When some little time back, I was cogitating on the sense of duty, and
wondering how we should get along without it, my mind reverted
persistently to that typically dutiful child Casabianca, the boy who,
according to Mrs. Hemans,
For that boy had figured in my school-lessons as a praiseworthy example
of devotion to duty — the duty of obedience — of obedience to authority
— the authority of superiors: Father, Country, God. I suppose it has
been much the same with the education of other children. By pictorial
example and precept the idea of duty is impressed into the soft brains
of juveniles, and, along with the cane, the devil, and other moral and
religious influences, helps to restrain the rebellious, happy-go-lucky
spirit of youth, teaches the due performance of ceremonial antics, and
gives a serious aspect to life. But now, after many years the
childishness of Mrs. Hemans appears to me to be on a level with that of
her hero. The natural desires of both of them had been warped by the
overpowering sense of obligation — duty. To call Casabianca “a creature
of heroic blood,” because he stood where he was told to stand, without
attempting to save himself from the shot and flame which came nearer and
nearer; because, rather than disobey the word of command, the boy gave
up his life (a sacrifice which had no compensating good effects); for
all this to be considered worthy of eulogium, is to me sickening. For
the boy, if he ever lived, I have only the most profound pity — and
think the pity of it is that he did not run away with the rest of the
crew.
Having looked on that picture, I beg you will look on this:
In the first act of Offenbach’s opera, “The Grand Duchess,” a young
soldier, by name Fritz, is discovered strutting up and down before the
imperial tent.
He goes with the regulation step, and holds his head erect in the
regulation attitude. Presently a beautiful damsel, the soldiers
sweetheart, comes upon the scene. Seeing Fritz, she rushes up to him,
but he scarce deigns to notice her. He does not stop marching, and dare
not even bend his head when on duty. He merely mutters aloud: “I must
obey the reg-u-la-tions!” This exasperates the girl, who answers,
“Confound the regulations!” She presses her attentions upon Fritz, who,
however, stiff as a clothes-prop, repeats: “I must o-bey the
reg-u-la-tions.” The conflict between love and duty goes on apace — but,
at last, Fritz unbends, puts down his musket, kisses his sweetheart, and
they both dance to a song whose chorus is “Damn the Regulations!”
With these two extreme and opposite examples — Casabianca and
Offenbach’s Fritz — before us; seeing that the path of duty is beset
with many temptations; and that the pressure of obligation has to
compete with the allurements of the sensual for the guidanceship, or
mis-guidanceship of youth; we will now try to find a basis in reason, if
we can, for that duty or subordination of self which most people believe
in to some extent.
Let us begin with political duty. From the belief that the levying of
taxes and the conscription is right and proper follows the belief that
it is the duty of the subject to pay the taxes and fight in obedience to
command. If you grant the right to command to anybody or to any thing,
be it the king, parliament, church, or conscience, you as a natural
consequence inflict the duty of obedience on those who are subject to
the commander. Political duty usually takes the form of allegiance to
government, to either a present form of government or an ideal form. And
here a distinction has to be made. Those who pay their taxes voluntarily
for their own protection, and who can conceive of no better means
whereby their homes and country can be saved from invasion except by the
government method, do not really support government from a sense of
duty. It is self-interest, clearly, in their case; and, when they force
others to pay taxes and preach duty for others to follow, against what
appears to them as their interests, they are attempting to bind
obligations upon their fellows which they do not feel themselves in the
same way.
To defend one’s home and country is patriotic. Patriotism is a fine,
healthy, selfish feeling; but it is comparatively little developed,
owing to its subordination to political duties. Reverence for the
national flag, and duty to rulers, is frequently mis-called patriotic
sentiment. You, however, are able to disconnect fatherland and
government, and will understand that patriotism recognises no difference
between a foreign king and a home king, i. e., between a foreign foe and
one in possession, — and that the most truly patriotic people are those
who try to preserve their homes and country from all kinds of invaders,
from military conquerors to School Board inspectors and rate and tax
collectors.
If I am compelled to labor and pay tribute to somebody, what does it
matter to me (except as a choice of least evil) whether I do so at the
bidding of Napoleon or of a majority of elected representatives of my
fellow-slaves? While on the look-out for an opportunity to repudiate the
obligations thrust upon me, it makes no difference whether succour comes
from abroad or from within my own country, so long as I gain in freedom.
When, in 1887, a war was talked of as imminent between Russia and
Germany, the hope was expressed by a considerable number of Russians
that, in the event of war breaking out, their own side would be
defeated. Said Georg Brandes, alluding to this patriotic feeling, “No
other possibility of liberation from the predominant misery presents
itself than that which is offered in the weakness which an unsuccessful
war will entail on the ruling system.”
If I am duty-bound to the particular government in possession of the
country I live in, I stultify myself. So I do whatever or wherever the
government. The feeling of duty prevents my judging correctly as to
where my self-interest lies. To act for my best advantage, I require
freedom to act as I like, and, so long as I allow the same freedom to
others, the just demands of others can no further go, as far as I am
concerned. I, who recognise no political duty, am free to form an
opinion as to whether the great political machine over me — the British
Empire, to-wit — is worth preserving. There’s a gain in being able to
take that standpoint; on the other hand, men become voluntary slaves to
the State by harboring ideas of political duty.
See how far political duty was carried in old Japan. To protect their
lord and master was taught as a sacred duty to all subjects. Political
education was thiswise: “Thou shalt not lie beneath the same sky, nor
tread on the same earth as the murderer of thy lord,” and the rights of
the avenger of blood were admitted even though he should pay the penalty
of his life. The story of the 47 Ronin exemplifies this: — It is related
that when the Prince of Ako was executed, through the mean contrivance
of some other lord, that 47 gentlemen, faithful vassals of the dead
Prince, swore to avenge the honor of their master. For this end they put
aside all other considerations and, through every obstacle, pursued
their plan up to the mo-ent when they surprised the object of their
vengeance and cut off his head. They then surrendered themselves to
their government, and were allowed the privilege of committing hara kiri
.Thus did these 47 noodles do their duty to their murdered lord by
slaying his murderer; their duty to their government by surrendering
themselves to it and voluntarily acquiescing in the righteousness of the
punishment awarded to them; and their duty to themselves by committing
suicide in the most honourable way. Such “noble” conduct as theirs
became immortalized, and has been the stock example for teaching the
young Japs how to be good down to the present time.
At the present time, to the present generation, mastership in its
nakedness is distasteful. Arguments have, therefore, been invented to
reconcile the governed to their governors. Majority rule is now the
fashion, and is called representative, — i. e., representative of the
majority of those who cannot govern themselves or who wish to have a
hand in governing others. Majority rule is said to be sanctioned by the
consent of the governed. Unfortunately for that theory, it so happens
that all of us have to submit whether we consent to be governed or not.
It is also said that people govern themselves by delegating powers into
the hands of representatives. Do they, indeed? It rather appears to me
that, when a man relegates the control over his purse, the control over
his body, or the direction of his energies, to others, — as if he had
lost the use of his head, — abdication best describes his performance.
In the present state of political education the representative theory
certainly gives to majority rule the semblance of a justification, and a
respectability not otherwise obtainable; so it will stick for a time. It
may be better than monarchy — it may, or it mayn’t (we receive the
blessings of both, by the way); but when we realize that all government
derives its “rights” from its might, and that majority rule is merely a
short cut to the victory of the numerically-stronger party, we see that
the ballot confers no rights upon majorities or their representatives
that are inviolable, and imposes no duties upon minorities that are
binding. The plea for the ballot, and of the whole of the electioneering
machinery, is to make out a case of free contract between the people and
the government. But the case is a miserable failure. Free contract
implies free individual consent of all the contracting parties, and that
is one thing never allowed by any kind of government.
From acting under the idea that we subjects are duty-bound to support
the doings of the Government we have taken part in the election of, we
find ourselves to-day saddled with enormous debt responsibilities not of
our making. The holders of Consols, India 3 per cents, Turkish bonds,
Corporation Stocks, Savings bank pass-books and other such “securities,”
labor under the belief that they have a perfect right to receive
interest on the money they have lent to government, as per agreement;
and that the people and their descendants must be taxed to pay such
interest for ever, or until such time as they choose lo pay off the
principal. If the repayment of the principal is an impossibility, then
taxes will be permanent for the benefit of the heirs of stockholders.
This is all said to be supported by free contract! Well, as far as I am
concerned, the mere statement of the case is sufficient to show, its
absurdity. As a private citizen of the world, in no way sharing with any
government the responsibility of contracting debts, being in no sense a
consenting party to what a government does in my name, I entirely
repudiate the duty that has been put upon me of paying a quota of either
principal or interest of the government’s debts. Let National Fund
holders fight out their claims before impartial juries; and if the Royal
Family, the Peerage, and the whole of the House of Commons get sold up
to satisfy those creditors, I shall not shed a tear.
The saying that “treaties are made to be broken,” evidently originated
in the easily-perceived fact that war-treaties are never free contracts.
A promise, wrung from a people at the sword’s point, counts for nothing.
Let the tables be turned, and the vanquished gain strength enough, and
the promise is repudiated as a matter of course. Between individuals the
same rule of equity holds as between nations. Only when my contract with
my fellow-man is considered fair by both of us, will we both do our
utmost to fulfil its terms. We would not have contracted did we not
think our interests furthered by such procedure; and, under free
conditions, each knows that the gain must be mutual to make the contract
binding. If I enter into an agreement, on an equally-free footing with
another person — and by equally-free I do not mean equally-forced, as
the Fabians interpret equal-freedom, but the condition of fullest
freedom required by both of us, in order that the contract shall not be
stained by force or fraud over either, or over third parties — then such
agreement contains the appeal to the sélef-interest of each party to
fulfil what he has undertaken. Of all contracts that require to be
backed by fines and penalties, the freest and, therefore, most
equitable; contracts require these threats least of all, if at all. The
pity of it is that, nowadays, the vitiating element of force enters into
nearly all contracts — a statement I ask your patience while I prove.
Let me first draw your attention to those despotic ordinances, known as
the Bank Charter Acts, of 1844–5, and the Coinage Acts. Those Acts are
commands of the British Government to all its subjects in this manner:
“Thou shalt use no other money than mine, or such as is issued by those
bankers whom I have granted special privileges to.” Other governments
have enacted currency laws to much the same effect as ours. You
understand that, owing to the indirect nature of all exchange, due to
division of labor, a medium is required in order that exchanges be
completed. This medium, money, is necessitated in the transactions
between shopkeepers and their customers, between capitalists and
laborers, and, in fact, whenever producers want to exchange their
products with one another. Given division of labor, and consequent
indirect exchange, and money is a necessity. It is, in fact, the first
necessity in any community that has advanced beyond direct barter. It
goes without saying, therefore, that any tampering with the money-supply
will have far-reaching effects, and that whenever currency laws exist
trade cannot be free. Laborers may not receive wages in kind, the law
has made that penal. Nor may they receive wages in notes issued as liens
upon their employers’ property; or upon general products in possession
of issuing bankers. Nor are they allowed to receive wages in any money
but the legal tenders defined by statutes. The old private issues of
tokens, usually made of lead and for a long time very abundant, have
been suppressed, as have also many forms of bank note. The general
ignorance and prejudice in favor of a gold money now support the money
laws. But it must not be forgotten that the repeated interference, by
law, of all private enterprise in attempting to supply the money-want,
has prevented the development of the banking trade to the point where
the wants of the people in this line are fully met. The law now says, in
effect, to the laborer “You must buy gold, or some of our tokens, before
you will be allowed to eat bread; and if there are not enough of these
trinkets to go round you may starve.�� When the supply of money falls
below the demand of those who have all the other requisites to exchange,
someone’s goods won’t sell except at a loss, someone will have to go
without dinner, and unproductive idleness for some capitalists and some
laborers is inevitable. At the same time, those who do, obtain the use
of the scarce money have to pay the scarcity price for it. The holders
of money are thus able to corner those who don’t happen to have any — to
keep the needful medium from circulating, and so cripple trade — to lend
it at interest, and so live without work. These results follow, whether
the limitation of the money-supply is caused by statute law, or arises
from lack of inventiveness. The effect upon contracts is is obvious. If
contracts are entered into beyond the means of the allowed monetary
credits to liquidate, men of business are pushed toward bankruptcy, and
have to pay usury, in order to raise the needful cash. Then, again, with
a short supply of money, the unit of value appreciates. When contracts
are worded in terms of a monetary unit that alters in value, an element
of uncertainty is introduced which is capable of upsetting all values,
and traders may at any time find themselves playing a game of chance,
running risks they did not intend to, and forced to speculate to save
themselves. It is impossible for contracts to be equitable with the
antiquated money-systems now in vogue.
The most calamitous effect, however, of a restricted currency, is seen
in the labor market. Consider: an increase of population is both an
increase in the demand for food and an increase in the supply of
laborers (potential). But no equivalent increase in the demand for
laborers can take place with money fixed. Ability to pay wages is
limited to the extent that employers have command over the money supply,
no matter how much command they may have over other wealth. While our
legal counters cannot increase except by new discoveries of a scarce
metal, or by the issue of tokens upon which the government makes a
profit, i. e., robs laborers, it follows that wages in the aggregate are
kept down to a dead level. The supply of laborers is ever growing, and
their requirement is that production, all round, shall increase. But
farmers and manufacturers will not increase the production of food and
other necessities unless they can sell such increase. This they cannot
do, except at a loss, while the total purchasing power of the masses is
kept down by a limited and expensive and taxed currency. The competition
amongst laborers to get some of the needful but short cash (in order to
buy food, etc.) reduces wages to the lowest, ’ i. e., compels workmen to
give a great deal for a very little return, i. e., compels inequity. The
fact of a luxurious aristocracy existing side by side with the other
extreme of hard-worked poverty — in fact, the whole glaring inequitable
distribution of wealth — is mainly the effect of our antiquated money
system. [1]
If a man binds himself to work during long hours for low wages (in
default of getting better terms in a State-limited labor market) I
cannot say he is under an obligation to fulfil his tasks on those terms.
If he scamps his work, or uses fraud to obtain a more equitable return
for his labor, I cannot accuse him, under the conditions, of violating
the just rights of others. He might reasonably say that his rights have
first been violated; tho’ generally he would not be able to show how. I
could not possibly deny him the right to resist force by force. I might
warn him of the risks he ran of injuring the wrong party and of
imperiling his own means of earning anything. I would compare, with him,
the gains that would accrue to him from peaceable methods over those
expected from forcible methods. I would try to convince him that the
attainment of perfectly equitable conditions between men depended upon a
widespread clearness of perception as to the real causes of the bad
conditions; that while so few people saw at all clearly into this
question, the use of violence was no cure at all, and would give
plausible excuse to the powers that be of curtailing still further the
public liberty and so make the condition of him and his fellows worse
than before. I would point out that the domain of economics contained
much debatable ground, and that, so long as free speech was allowed, the
road was open for him to influence the minds of his fellows and so gain
justice by the surest way.
Such considerations as the foregoing are, however, only those of
expediency. According to the conditions in each case of oppression, more
or less force may be the only means left for the wronged ones to assert
their rights and to get some satisfaction out of existence.
To return to the contract question. Putting aside the vitiating effect
of force, it will still be asked if I admit that, under perfectly free
conditions, men are in duty bound to fulfil their promises. I reply:
there is no duty in the matter. The binding power of a promise has
limits, as anyone can see who appreciates the uncertainty of human
expectations. Promises have to do with the future, an uncertain factor
in any case. Alterations may occur in the value-measurer, whether it is
one chosen freely or one imposed by authority — and inequity may result.
If I promise to deliver a ton of coals to Smith by next Saturday, but
fall ill, or find I have miscalculated the time necessary to get the
coals over to Smith, what becomes of my duty to fulfil? It is useless to
tell me I can fulfil that duty later on, or that an equivalent fine will
put things straight. For those makeshifts are not fulfilments, but
alterations, of the terms and, therefore, a qualified repudiation of the
promise.
Following the example of shipowners in their Bill of Lading clauses,
exempting them from completing their contracts should an Act of God or
any other enemy of the State intervene; many merchants, for the same
end, insert strike and lock-out saving clauses in their contracts. But
it is impossible to foretell and specify all the occurrences, outside
the contractors control, which might interfere with contract
anticipations. All the uncalculable contingencies should, theoretically
(one might suppose) exempt contractors from penalties as much as the
specified ones. Not that I have any deep-rooted objections to risks, nor
that I advocate insurance against every blessed little contingency that
happen. I simply assert that the chances of the unexpected happening do
cut under the idea of the sacredness of contract.
Contracts will be kept, when all idea of their sacredness has
disappeared, because it is for the contractors’ self-interest to keep
them. If any one thinks he can take advantage of a general D. V.
unwritten clause, in order to repudiate his promises on the strength of
his unexpected weakness, he does so at the peril of losing the
confidence of others in him, and of being “left.” Jails are not the most
potent enforcers of contracts. The attractions of the benefits which a
good reputation confers are greater.
Moreover, the keeping of promises is an essential feature of the
condition of equal liberty so much desired. If I do not keep my promises
to others, they need not keep their promises to me; and I, besides, give
them an excuse to treat me as an inferior person altogether, The
condition of equal liberty is nothing more than a condition arising out
of free contract, when each agrees to respect the liberty of others in
consideration of having his own liberty respected. Such social contract
is not drawn upon parchment. When I and my neighbor appreciate the
economies and other benefits obtainable by treating each other as
equals, we don’t go to the expense of putting our new reciprocal
relationships into legal contract form, but put the thing into practice.
The condition of equal and fullest liberty can only be attained by those
who desire it. Those who can only contemplate equitable conditions with
angry feelings cannot be under an obligation to further the attainment
of the same. Neither can those who find consolation in dutiful obedience
to monarchs and other masters. None of these people are under any
obligation to further liberty or to respect the liberty of any one. How
can they be, seeing they do not believe their interests run
liberty-wards? How can they be under obligation to injure themselves?
But — let them take warning. Be they fools or knaves, kings or slaves;
be they county-councillors, tax imposters, or other invaders — if they
will not respect the liberty of others, they thereby give up all title
to have their own respected. When aggressively-inclined legality-mongers
see the force of this argument they may, perchance, hesitate before
accepting positions of privilege and rulership.
What has to be guarded against is an unreasoning, slavish adherence to
written agreements, as if the fact of their being in writing made them
more honest than otherwise. The important thing is that the contract be
equitable, i.e. honest, — not that it be written in black or red ink, on
parchment or straw paper. Do not let us miss the substance. In all cases
where breakage of contract is an invasion of another’s liberty)
injuring, perhaps, those who depended upon fulfilment of the contract),
the injured parties may justly use force to defend themselves. Those who
were upholders of equal liberty would be the most punctilious in keeping
contracts, i.e., equitable contracts, just because equity is the
condition of liberty.
Still, after all, liberty is only a means to happiness. Those who
sacrifice happiness to liberty commit suicide. In nine cases out of ten,
say, I find my self-interest prompts me to fulfil my promises. In the
tenth case, which I deem antagonistic to my interests, I am under no
duty to fulfil. Of course, if I see in time that the consequences of
repudiation, in this case, will be more disastrous to me than
fulfilment, I fulfil, as the course of least evil. But I may think
otherwise, and even find dishonesty my best policy. I take the natural
consequences of my conduct in any case.
Let those who judge harshly the breaker of laws and contracts refilct
that, while dishonest laws create privileged positions for some, the
only defense of those who are enslaved by such laws may be underhand,
dishonest practices. If the self-preservative instincts are not allowed
free play in honest channels, they are forced into dishonest channels. A
man will be honest when he sees honesty to be his best policy. Those who
preach honesty as though the expediency of that course did not depend
upon the conditions prevailing preach rank superstition.
If a poor man steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving children, I
believe the act would be excused by most of us. My dearest friend may
have no written claim upon me, yet I may be irresistibly drawn to help
him, even though by so doing I render myself unable to pay those who
have written claims, and honest ones, against me. I do not pretend such
conduct can be justified. But I am under no duty to consider the claims
upon me as measurable by a pecuniary standard, or by a legal one, or by
priority as regards lime. Only the person who has to act can know the
relative intensity of the claims he is confronted with; or, in other
words, which are the claims he gets most satisfaction in satisfying. No
duty to follow any code of morality is imposed by Nature upon any one.
All the codes are made up by men as fallible, and no less ignorant, than
yourselves.
There are many persons who claim to be superstition-proof, who yet
insist upon the inviolability of contract, especially written contract.
But I say that if Antonio really believes he is under a duty to let
Shylock take his pound of flesh, just because of his promise, he makes
of his promise a god or fetish, and degrades himself into a
superstition-ridden barbarian. And for Portia to have to rely upon the
quibbling subterfuge of insisting upon such an interpretation of the
contract to the letter, as awarding a pound of flesh without blood, the
same to be weighed to a mathematical point — in order to save the life
of Antonio — showed how superstition-ridden were the judges and the
populace she had to deal with. I wonder some modern Portia does not try
the trick upon her butcher, in order to get off paving his bill.
Courts are erected now, as they have been for ages, to insist upon human
sacrifices being made to the contract deity. The whole duty of man as a
social unit is to fulfil his contract to the letter; as, likewise, his
whole duty as a political subject is to obey the laws to the letter, and
nothing else.
I know well, how some thinkers are swayed on this point. They say, as
did one of the gang who tried the Merchant of Venice, that the Court
exists to uphold a principle embodied in the laws of the realm, and so
forth. But, I ask, why should any principle, or any law be considered of
more importance than human life, than human happiness? If it be urged
that no laws could be enforced if exceptions were allowed, I reply: the
need for the exceptions shows the foolishness of the laws. Cease to make
any more laws, and put those you have upon the shelf.
The trouble with contracts is: to know when a breach of contract
constitutes a breach of liberty, i. e., an invasion. When it comes to be
seen generally, that that is the only question for juries and other
defensive institutions to argue upon, we shall be nearer the realization
of equity than we are at present.
If I choose to fulfil a promise of life-long marriage, I can do so. If I
choose to pay usurious debts to a Shvlock, I can do so. But neither the
woman nor the Jew should, in these cases, have any help from the Courts
of Justice, any more than betting creditors now have in this country.
The natural consequences which I take in breaking those promises — (say
I am shunned in the one case and lose my credit in certain circles in
the other) — I must take, and may deserve. But as the keeping of either
of those promises might land me in slavery; would give to the Jew the
gains of his cunning upon which he had no just claim to rely, while to
the woman it would give a hold upon my future upon which she, also, had
no business to rely; it is clear to me that equity does not require the
fulfilment of either promise. We do not require institutions for the
upholding of extortion, or usury or slavery of any kind, just because
those things have been previously agreed to between both parties in
writing. As no aggression has been committed when a person refuses to
fulfil his promise to give something for nothing, such a promise is not
enforceable in defense of liberty. Let the cunning intriguer stand upon
his merits, upon his own persuasive efforts, to get his one-sided
contracts fulfilled to his own enrichment and another’s impoverishment.
[2]
As for the duties said to be created by the relation-ships between
husband and wife, and between parents and children, these require
special notice.
To commence with, the marriage contract is not a free contract. The
Powers only acknowledge one form of it, and put disabilities upon the
offspring from those who have not obeyed the marriage regulations.
Therefore, the parrot-like, repeated-after-the-official, marriage vows,
can no more be considered as the voluntary expression of the free
desires of both contracting parties than can any other promises that are
dictated by public usage and law. Therefore are we not justified in
condemning, offhand, those who are nonconformists to marriage. When the
law threatens, society ostracises, and education produces its bias
against those who participate in free natural unions, and against
“natural” children, those who are too weak to openly face the tempest
need not be restrained by “duties” from seeking in secret those
satisfactions denied them openly.
As the poverty-producing currency laws, land laws, and taxes, intensify
the struggle for an enjoyable existence, the marriage market inevitably
feels some of the resulting speculation which runs through all markets;
and this must sometimes subordinate, distort and degrade the natural
attractions which alone give to marriage a raison d’etre. In one of
Ibsen’s plays, Mrs. Tesman is asked by an old lover, why she had
consented to marry Tesman whom she did not love. She replied:“He was the
only one who offered to support me.”
I do not doubt that the liberation of the means of subsistence from the
usurious control of government will, eventually, increase the
independence of woman along with the independence of men. When that time
comes to pass, you may find the “duties” of a man to support his wife,
and of a wife to obey her husband, and of both to remain bound together
till death, to have lapsed and gone out of fashion because superfluous.
Women who are independent are not likely to bear more children than they
themselves want. What they want — in that line — they will be willing to
pay for, as far as the natural price of labor and pain goes. If the
birth of a child is the realization of a want, a gratification of the
maternal longing, then is the mother paid for the trials preceding her
deliverance.
If a woman does not, with pleasure, contemplate having children, but
bears a child in order to please a man whom she has married in order to
have a home, she is a slave to circumstances; the conditions of
existence are not free enough for her.
“Whoso cannot defend himself, will not be defended,” is a remark of
Emerson’s that is as applicable to woman as to man. Those women who,
through their beauty or lovely dispositions, find some men only too
happy to be allowed the great pleasure of supporting them, have,
thereby, defensive attributes against want, in addition to their working
powers. The support granted them by their husbands is not given under a
compulsory sense of duty — at least not at first — but from
self-interest, evidently.
When we are taught to look upon women as, by nature, dependent, and that
it is the duty of their husbands or fathers or brothers to support them,
the tendency of such teaching is to hide from view any political
compulsion that makes the dependence and to check practical measures
which would emancipate.
What woman or women is each man in duty bound to support, and why? Has a
bachelor no duties in this respect? If not, why not? Cohabitation, in
itself, carries no obligation either from woman to man or man to woman.
When it is free from all arbitrary restraints, and then mutually
desired, the consequences are either discounted in agreement beforehand,
or else are gladly taken as so much possible gain, which will exalt the
lives of both man and woman, The mutual satisfactions of both
participants cancel one another and leave no obligations behind.
The last stronghold for the reign of duty to others is, undoubtedly, in
the relalions between parents and their children. Yet, as with other
duties, those who insist upon them do not tell us where they came from.
Study wild nature from which we sprang, and see if there is any place
for obligation to take care of off-spring. Is the lion under an
obligation to kill the lamb, in order to fulfil his “duty” to provide
food for Mrs. Lioness and her cubs? If so, perhaps the mother sheep is
also in duty bound to keep her lamb out of the lion’s way? The duties of
the two species clash, and knock the bottom out of the duty theory. I
would also like to inquire if the ichneumon insect is fulfiling its duty
when it lays its eggs inside the body of a living caterpiller, for that
act is necessary to the care of the young ichneumons. And are all the
ugly and ferocious animals on the face of the earth blameworthy if they
neglect their young, and if they do not their level best to bring their
young to maturity, and so ensure the perpetuation of their own ugly
mugs?
Whether materfamilias looks after her progeny to just that extent that
it gives her pleasure to do so (the pleasure of the moment and the
pleasure prospective), or whether she looks after them from a sense of
duty, or from fear of penalties for neglect, we may be sure that only
that treatment will survive that ensures, or at least allows, offspring
to attain maturity, and that improvements in methods of treatment which
give better chances of existence to offspring will (cæteris paribus)
supplant less beneficial methods. Dispositions being inheiritable,
neglectfulness and brutality towards offspring lead directly to the
extinction of those qualities, because those qualities are antagonistic
to survival; while affectionate care perpetuates itself. Now, as the
most affectionate parents are just those who find their own happiness
furthered by, and dependent upon, the tender solicitude they show for
their children’s welfare; who, therefore, give their care voluntarily
and in the easiest manner (i.e., at the least cost of effort); while, on
the other hand, it is only the callous or indifferent parents who can be
influenced in this matter, by the compulsion of the feeling of duty or
of the force of the law; you see, at once, that all interference or
teaching that insists upon the duty, either of the parents or of the
community to preserve children is so much wasted force spent in trying
to undo the beneficial action of natural selection.
I quite admit that there are cases where the help of outsiders is a
benefit in preserving quite as good specimens of humanity as are born,
for accidents will sometimes happen to the best of parents; but help
given voluntarily, through sympathy, is given for the benefit of the
sympathisers, who would have felt agonies of remorse if they had not
eased their feelings that way. Besides, voluntary help still allows
selection to go on — is a kind of natural selection, in fact — for the
helpers select whom they will help, and to what extent.
In defending others against aggressors, we lessen the chances of being
attacked ourselves. In pursuing such egoistic conduct, our sympathetic
natures are developed, — i. e., we get direct pleasure out of the
interest we take in others, in subserving our own welfare. As a
consequence, the witnessing, or even the knowledge of the infliction of
pain upon others produces pain in ourselves. So intimately is our own
happiness bound up with the happiness of others.
With regard to children, all we can do (from the point of view of a
far-reaching self-interest), beyond denying the rights of parents and
others to ill-treat the children in their charge, is to succour them
ourselves whenever, and to what extent, our individual sympathies for
the unfortunate ones may impel us. Any child must allowed to accept such
outside help, whenever its own parents forfeit their position as
guardians by neglect or cruelty. To deny such liberty to the child would
be an aggression upon the child.
When we consider that the care of children, when prompted by duty alone,
is likely to fall far short of the care that is prompted by affection
alone, and has a harshness about it sufficient to ensure dislike and
thanklessness from the recipients in return, we see how the
long-continued teaching of duty tends to maintain an anti-social and
discordant attitude between parents and their children. Turn, now to the
lower mammals, who only follow their instincts and appitites, and we see
at once the all-sufficingness of uneducated physical forces to produce
the perfection of maternal care.
Where, now, does filial duty come in? Men and women have children for
their own gratification entirely. The desire for succession, the desire
for the company of the innocent, happy little chickabiddies, the
possibility of helpful children proving the best insurance and solace
against old age and sickness — let alone the gratification of the sexual
feelings preliminarily involved — is so alluring that the trials
incidental to the realization of it are all voluntarily gone through,
and the chances of a preponderance of unhappiness resulting are risked.
As then, it is in the pursuit of their own happiness that adults bring
children into the world and bear the cost of rearing them, it is clear
that parents cannot saddle their children with any obligation, with any
of the cost. The child is not consulted as to its creation, nor as to
the home conditions into which it is thrust. The gift of life is not
always worth having. The child may inherit pain. It may have to live in
a dirty house and not have enough to eat. Its parents may beat it or
relegate it to the care of harsh menials. They may thrash the child from
a sense of duty as did the dutiful and brutal Mrs. Montagu. But even if
born under the most happy conditions, its parents have merely acted in
their own self-interest, and all self-sacrifices on their part have been
part of the cost of obtaining the family happiness they so much desired.
When children yield delight to their parents, the latter must often
consider they are repaid a thousand-fold for all the trouble they have
borne; in which case it would be nearer the truth to say that the
parents are indebted to their children.
The idea of obligation (duty) directly diminishes the enjoyment of
existence. When we adults are treated by a neighbor to a dance, a
dinner, a present, or what not, we, like asses, consider our obligations
and put ourselves to no end of inconvenience to make some return. That
is, we do something to lessen, if not to negative altogether, the full
value of the gift, and so prevent our kind neighbor from experiencing
the delight of having really benefitted somebody.
Gifts never produce obligations upon the recipients. If they did, the
obligation would, logically, be to return equal value and that is
equivalent to annihilating the pleasures of giving and receiving.
Children show themselves our superiors in these matters. They don’t
allow their enjoyment of what is given to them to be reduced by the
terrible sense of obligation, but take their fill.
The teaching of duties to children is an attempt to supplant the
teaching of the childs own expefience by a superstition, the
superstition that there is any other guide to its conduct than its own
self-interest.
As I, a parent, have only the right of might over my children, and, in
imposing my will upon them, seek my own personal happiness, it greatly
depends upon my foresight or my shortsight whether I get what I want or
something different. When the idea of duty ceases to have weight,
parents will doubtless see that they must respect their children’s
wishes and feelings more than they have done heretofore, in order to get
kind treatment and respect for their wishes in return. For the moment
let us leave specific duties and take duty in the lump.
Nelson is debited with saying: “England expects every man to do his
duty.” This expectation reckons upon the superstition and ignorance of
the masses, and enables the governing classes to have a stronger hold
over the classes beneath them than they otherwise would have. The jingo
versemaker truthfully tells the dutiful what their place is:
Lewis Morris, in beautiful but unsatisfying verse, says:
Stopford Brooke proceeds to prophecy: “Eighty years hence it will matter
little whether we were a peasant or a peer; but it will matter very much
whether we did our duty as one or the other.” To which I reply that the
reward put forward of the praise of posterity appeals to one’s ambition;
and that if that gain is sought, under the pretence of doing one’s duty,
a lie is committed — a deception practised upon the unwary. How is duty
to be made operative upon a person who doesn’t care a button for
posterity? Stopford Brooke, by the way, should enlighten us as to
whether the duties of peer and peasant are to keep in the ruts which God
and the king have made for them, or whether it is their duty to fight
each other. For the duties of peer and peasant may clash like those of
the lion and sheep.
Says Whittier:
No doubt. But the question presses: What is our “duty’s task”? On
Hospital Saturday the Salvationist spinster at the Street corner will
enlighten you on that point. She is (or was when I saw her last)
provided with an illuminated card on which are printed the words: “Give,
for it is a duty.” The magic word duty is supposed to be quite capable
of opening sesame, i. e., vour purse. With susceptible natures it will
sometimes induce self-sacrifice on the large scale, and pave the way to
voluntary enslavement.
Tolstoi said to George Keenan: “I believd that it is every man’s duty to
labor for others who need assistance.” In the course of conversation
Keenan said unto him: “But suppose that your Chinese brethren came
across the sea in sufficient numbers to reduce you to slavery; you would
probably object to that?” To which the logical Tolstoi replied: “Why
should I? Slavery is working for others; all I want is to work for
others” Tolstoi finds his happiness in working for others and, according
to report, works under healthy conditions, at occupations of his own
choosing, alternating mental and physical work in a way that gives a
zest to all that he does. Moreover, he does not suffer from want by his
“working for others.” Consequently, Tolstoi’s “working for others” is no
sacrifice; coinciding with his inclinations, it is no duty.
The call of duty is an internal compelling forcé which overcomes the
individuals disinclation to do something disagreeable or indifferent.
The person feels under an obligation. What he does under the impulse of
obedience to the call of duty relieves him, like the payment of a just
debt. (Such extreme cases — misnamed altruism — are purely egoistic —
they are done for the relief — benefit — of self). He feels that his
duty must be done, willy-nilly, whatever the consequences to himself;
whether he accidently gains by it or whether he ‘falls and perishes’, as
Lewis Morris says the chances are he may. Obedience, self-sacrifice,
unqualified and absolute, is the essence of duty.
If rewards are calculated upon, the professed duty motive is a sham. The
soldier who fights because he likes that kind of work, or because he is
forced to, or for the honors to be won that way, fights not from a sense
of duty whatever he may profess. If I give all my goods to feed the
poor, and my body to be burnt, on the understanding that I shall be
compensated therefor by eternal happiness ¡n heaven, or from the
happiness I feel in giving, or in the expectation of the blessings of
posterity, I act selfishly, and not from a sense of duty. How would I
act, if no reward spurred me on?
I know that the most effective appeal for subm’ssion to authority is the
appeal to duty, whether it be political, social, maternal, filial, ar
other species of duty; for the whole of religious and moral society has
agreed that those who do their duty are sanctified and elevated above
all others. But the attraction of the religious and moral sanctions,
whether the sanctions come by way of the priest, or public opinion, or
the conscience, proves that the dutiful people are as fundamentally
egoistic as the brute creation, and shows their altruistic contention to
be lies, not willful lies, necessarily, but necessarily lies for all
that.
It is inevitable that, even with the intensest altruistic desire, there
is an egoistic basis, and the so-called altruistic motive is a secondary
result which satisfies the ego. It is inconceivable otherwise. Try to
imagine a body following the path of least attraction and of greatest
resistance, and you fail. Try to imagine a man jumping into the sea,
risking his own life in order to save a child who had fallen overboard,
against his own interests as he feels them, and you fail. The deed could
not be done except as the inevitable following of the path of greatest
attraction and least resistance. Ask yourselves what attraction there is
in doing a brave action, or what evil consequences are thereby escaped
to the doer, — compare the probable effect upon your own and upon other
witnesses’ feelings, following the doing of the deed or the shirking of
it, — and I doubt not you will perceive the physical basis of motive.
When the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes said: “Sanctification is the intense
desire of the individual not to have his own way,” he said something fit
for the comic papers. If his “intense desire” is fulfiled, he has “his
own way.” If your actions are directed to the benefit of others,
apparently regardless of self, the satisfaction of desire, or the escape
from the feeling of shame, prove your actions to have been regardful of
self. Consciousness of the fundamental primary egoistic motive is not
required to prove its existence. The secretion of bile by the liver is
none the less egoistic and self-preservative because it goes on
unconsciously. Hence, to speak of any motive as altruistic in its
source, is false.
Here I indict the duty idea for giving a glamor of nobleness to actions
that have no claim to be so regarded. When a person is refered to as
having “done his duty,” there is an endeavor to show up his conduct as
being antagonistic to his self-interest; the egoistic motive is left out
of account altogether, and false values given to his conduct in
consequence.
If, as I say, the individual can only follow that path to which he is
lead by his nature and environment, see the uselessness and falsity of
preaching duty! Duty to whom? Duty to what? Where does the obligation
come in at all? The individual must knuckle down to the inevitable, duty
or no duty. He has no choice.
“Consequences is the only god,” says Benjamin R. Tucker; but the duty to
consequences is absurd. Consequences act by weeding out the most
thoughtless and providing the remainder with food for thought. Thus is
the individual induced to weigh the chances between any two courses for
benefit or detriment to himself; and his ultimate decision depends upon
the intensity of the various opposing forces, is the resultant of the
forces in action. Consequences can only appeal to a man’s self-interest,
and this he already follows according to his lights. If his lights are
only half-lights, and he is led to sacrifice his present existence for a
fictitious future which never matures, he leaves the earth as an
inheiritance to those having sharper intellects and clearer perceptions,
those who are “selfish” in the largest, broadest, thickest, longest
widest sense.
When we come to consider that human beings are descended from ancestors
who, over an infinitely long series of generations, owed their success
in life, with ability to leave oñspring, to the fact that their
self-preservative instincts were in the ascendent, we may well pause at
the unliklihood of any thoroughly anti-egoistic course of conduct being
able to secure the same success. Rather does it appear likely that those
who have “conscientious scruples” about their conduct will have to take
a back seat; while the altruists (if there are any) will spend their
energies in making their enemies fat.
When a man realizes that, so long as he sacrifices for others’ benefit,
from a blind obedience to duty, so long may he continue to do so; that,
so long as he is willing to pay taxes so long will he be taxed; and
other eye openers of a like kind, — he will decline to be duped any
longer. Moralists will tell him, as a last straw to save a dying cult,
that it is his duty to choose the path that leads to salvation for
himself (if he will not for others.) These words are meaningless. To the
satisfaction of his desires he needs no injunction, no command if duty,
but only aid as to the safest means of obtainment without deductions for
needless pains and taxes.
“Duty to self,” the last resting-place for the duty-superstition, is a
self-contradiction. Duty is unthinkable, except as obligation. How can I
owe myself something? Shall I transfer a shilling from one pocket to
another to settle the debt? Duty to self is an account in which the same
person is both debtor and creditor. Those who cannot see that such an
account balances, that it is settled and cancelled by the very terms in
which it is stated, require lessons in bookeeping.
Some will doubtless say that “duty to self” is an abbreviated way of
expressing the idea that one cannot effectively discharge his duties to
others unless he takes care of his own health and wealth. Such an
interpretation throws overboard duty to self and goes back upon duty to
others. But how about these others? Unless others owe an equal duty to
methat I owe to them, there is inequality of rights, that is, slavery.
And if the duties receivable and payable are equal to each other, they
cancel each other and may be ignored. As it is, some people do their
duties (pay their dues and taxes, render services without remuneration,
&c.), and other people receive these as theirs by right. My duties are
the rights of others over me. How came others to have rights over me?
and how came I to be under these obligations, which bind me without my
consent?
The only way of escape from bondage is to deny all rights and duties
whatsoever. Look to self-interest direct for the attainment of your
ends, and you will see that all the good things in life, all the
harmonious relationships you cling to, will be preserved because you
like them.
The vague way in which the appeal to duty is made, and the unquestioning
saintly way in which the responsive dutiful acttions are performed,
smack of the superstitious, and show where the weak spot inhuman nature
is to be found. A traveller on the look-out for signs of native
superstitions in a far country, would be guided by all actions performed
under the spell of duty.
Given a believer in duty, or one who is deeply susceptible to the
feeling of obligation, and it becomes possible for him to be enslaved
with his own consent.
The believer in duty is food for powder. He will either be enslaved by
the crafty, or by what he calls his “conscience.” His freedom is a
limited freedom at best. Circumstances change, but he dare not take
advantage of the tide which, taken at the flood, would have led him on
to fortune and pleasures new. The propitious time, when tabooed
pleasures offer themselves to him, he is afraid of. His duty to Mrs.
Grundy, or Mrs. Jones, to the dead hand, to his religion or to a
principle, binds him. He lives within boundary walls which he daré not
scale.
“But our moral codes embody the experience of the race!” I hear some
wiseacre exclaim. Experience, of your grandmother. Circumstances change,
and your moral codes won’t stand the test.
In place of duty I put — nothing. Superstitions never want replacing, or
we should never advance to freedom.
Waste not your energies, but turn them all to your own advantage.
Instead of pretending to be “doing my duty,” I will in future go direct
to the naked truth, acknowledge I am actuated in all I do by
self-interest, and so economise in brain-power, What I want is to
discover where my true, most lasting interests lie. I am the more likely
to find that out if I allow no moral considerations to obscure my view.
If I find the ordinary tread-mill routine of existence irksome, or tame
and unsatisfying, I fearlessly explore further — allow my mind full
swing, and see no good reasons for bowing to the limitations set by
others. Perchance I am seduced by the sciences, or I pursue the
beautiful and try to realize my ideal. My pleasure is my only guide; and
in proportion as my sympathies are great, that is in proportion to my
susceptibility to external influences, which is, again, the measure of
my capacity for feeling pleasure, for appreciating and: receiving
benefit by the most intense and most subtle impacts of which matter in
motion is capable, — do I seek the welfare of all I come in contact
with. Society may be everything to me, but it is nothing to me except in
so far as it furnishes me with material for my happiness.
If I have a bad liver complaint, or am worried by a thousand anxieties,
or find ¡t difficult to get food for myself and for those who are a part
of me — if, in brief, I cannot get happiness out of the conditions into
which I am born, then the sacredness of those conditions is at a
discount in my valuation of them, and their stability is not my concern.
In the steps I take to satisfy my hunger, whether it be hunger of the
senses or of the mind, I am brought face to face with the universal
properties of matter and cease to consider codes, moral and political.
It may be as beneficial for a man, as it is expedient for him, under
some circumstances, to deny himself many luxuries; to partake of meat
sparingly, and of pastry only once a month, to drink only water and eat
bread without butter, to live in one small room, to worship only one god
and no godesses, or to share his love with only one woman in a lifetime.
But the economies and abnegations found useful at certain times and
places are not to be codified as the laws for all times and places. All
Mosaic tables, constitutions, pettyfogging County Council licensing
systems, and other strait-waistcoat regulations, necessarily suppress
much enjoyment, necessarily cause a sheer waste of life — for they are
born of ignorance of the possibilities of life, and of intolerance.
Working on egoistic lines, I see the necessity of forbearing from laying
down the moral law for anyone. What another does is beyond my praise or
blame. Each one’s activities have been set in motion by his environment
(past and present), and contact with others shows how far each can go.
In furtherance and in defence of my own well-being will I use my
argumentative or other forces upon others. My self-interest; teaches me
to respect the liberty of others as the cheapest way to get my own
respected.
The Mother is often held up as the pattern example of duty and
self-sacrifice. But would the mother cling to her pains if she could get
the blessings of maternity and the consolations of religion without
them? Does she not, like the rest of us, follow the path of greatest
satisfaction? Of course she does. This stock example of dutiful
self-sacrifice falls with the whole show, and will not be resuscitated
unless the typical mother comes up to the Fabian-Socialist’s ideal, by
being willing to endure the keenest of anguish: the sacrifice of her
infant for the good of the community, because it happens to be
club-footed, or has a birth-mark, or experts say it is not up to the
regulation weight. I admire the natural mother as she exists to-day,
because she considere her child of much more importance than the whole
human race; for her child’s happiness is a necessary condition to her
own, and a source of great comfort to her, while the rest of humanity
possibly only worry her.
When we remember that this life is our first, last, and only chance,
that
“Only to youth will spring be spring,”
while each day brings us nearer to our final dissolution, the cruelty of
expecting any one to sacrifice his or her possibilities of happiness —
whether the possibilities be of a high or low order — is apparent. And
it is more apparent to those of the widest sympathies than to the
narrow-minded regulationist.
So long as the superstition that there is any ought or duty by which
conduct should be regulated, has a hold over the minds of men and women,
so long will those people be incapable of appreciating the full value of
existence; and their living powers will run to waste while they grovel
in the altruistic mire of self-denial. Only when that superstition is
abandoned is the mind really emancipated. Only then is the individual
free to rise to the experience of the highest bliss of which his or her
nature is capable.
May the evening’s amusement bear the morning’s reflection.
[1] In the 1894 edition the reader was refered to Henry Semour of the
Free Currency League for the remedy for financial ills. The present
reader may find views substantially the same as held by that league in
the works of Wm. B. Greene, Benj. R. Tucker, Hugo Bilgram, James Mili,
and “the father of them all,” Pierre J. Proudhon, whose modern followers
are known as Mutualists. (Pub.)
[2] If impartially chosen, free and unfettered Juries were the sole
tribunals for settling disputes, all persons would have to rely upon the
justice of their claims for assistance from defensive associations, and
the full development and expression of the sense of justice amongst the
common people would rapidly proceed; instead of being hindered, as now,
by statute laws.